No-cook dinners for the lazy cook

No-cook dinners? I never cook dinner. You might find it hard to believe, considering
I started working at EatingWell Magazine in 1990, but I don’t cook. I can cook—I just don’t have to. I’m not bragging (well, maybe a little); I fully appreciate how lucky I am to have married someone who can manage menu planning, grocery shopping and meal prep way better than I ever could.

When I try to feed the family, it’s often a recipe for disaster, or at least disappointment. First I get sidetracked deciding what to make. Then I underestimate how long everything will take and can never get everything on the table at the same time. When I realize there isn’t quite enough of what I’ve managed to produce to go around, it’s too late. It just makes sense to let him do dinner while I stick to what I’m good at: pouring the wine.

But with these recipes, my friends in the EatingWell Test Kitchen have cleverly trumped my excuses by removing cooking from the equation altogether. These recipes can be made—in under 25 minutes—by anyone wielding nothing more than a sharp knife and a good attitude. (Get 20+ more ultra-quick dinner recipes here.) There’s nothing a hungry family has to wait around for. By the end of the week, you won’t have used the stove once. We can all drink to that.

Wendy Ruopp has been the managing editor of EatingWell for most of her adult life. Although she writes about food for the Weeknights column of EatingWell Magazine, her husband does the cooking at home.